Longer School Days for Chieftains

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The San Diego school district decided on April 1st that next year every high school in San Diego will have longer instructional days.

For several years this has been a problem throughout the United States. Do students need more time in class?

Many parents prefer the idea of having their kid going to school early, due to work schedules. In late 2017 and early 2018, the San Diego Unified School District decided to make a change.

After approval was given, SDUSD says that at the beginning of the next school year, every high school in San Diego will start school an hour and 40 minutes earlier than usual. Based on several surveys taken by parents, students, and teachers, more than 80% people prefer school starting earlier, allowing scholars to have a longer school day.

Specifically since Clairemont High School’s starting time is currently 7:20 am, the new starting time will be 6 am, which means the first bell will ring at 5:55 in the morning.

“This change is going to be a very drastic change for high schools, but it will now allow students to cover more subjects in class, finish more homework, and much more. This also gives the students more time to remember the information learned in each of the students’ classes,” said Clairemont High teacher Dr. P. Rankonu.

The change will affect everyone’s schedule, but not necessarily in a wrong way. Students will still have all their classes, just longer by about 20-30 minutes.

The purpose was to make classes longer, but lunchtime will not increase. In fact, lunchtime will decrease to make courses longer.

This problem is not something recent either. The state of California has been thinking about a change ever since test scores have started to go down drastically in 2011.

According to test results taken from 2009 up until present day, the percentage of first-year students that received a passing score in their math classes has dropped from 81% to 57.3%. These results were taken from every school in California by every school district.

Current Clairemont High 9th-grade math teacher Mrs. P. Iesquared said, “Students will do anything to avoid learning an excessive amount of new information in a short time span. What we need is more time in each class, so students can have time to not just learn but also to reflect.”

There can always be several solutions to one single problem, yet many people decided this change would be the most beneficial to everyone.

2 Comments

2 Responses to “Longer School Days for Chieftains”

Mrs. Klein on
April 3rd, 2018 11:25 AM

I sure hope this is an April Fools joke! This goes against what scientific research shows about the teenage brain and how it best functions. Teens brains don’t naturally start secreting melatonin and transferring to sleep mode until 11PM at night…so studies show teens need high schools that start at 8:30 am or later.

Clarissa I. on
April 11th, 2018 4:24 PM

Thank you for your response, and yes it was an April fool’s story. Hope you enjoyed the story!